An Irish student working in Canada during his summer vacation was killed when he fell from the window of a New York hotel where he had been visiting friends days before he was due to return to Ireland.
Mr Cian O'Kennedy (19), from Sutton, Dublin, died on Sunday morning after he fell through a fourth floor window at the West Side Inn in Manhattan where he was staying after spending Saturday night with friends in New York.
"Nobody knows what happened. He went to sleep on Saturday night, and it seems in the morning he tripped over some luggage in the room and went out through the window," said Det Ken Clancy of New York's 24th Precinct.
"It's just a simple, unfortunate accident," he said.
Mr Barry Magee, the Canada Co-ordinator for USIT NOW, the organisation that helps bring students to American and Canada for summer work, said Mr O'Kennedy had been working in Toronto. Mr O'Kennedy, who it is believed was a student in UCD, had been due to fly back to Ireland this weekend. Instead, his uncle, a priest in Alabama, arrived in New York yesterday to arrange for Mr O'Kennedy's body to be flown back to Ireland. Several of Mr O'Kennedy's friends in New York and Canada had already travelled back for the funeral, Mr Magee said.
Every year USIT NOW brings approximately 500 Irish students to Canada and around 8,500 more to the United States, where they can work for the summer before returning to their studies.